I felt it very important to write a guide to running an improved Blood on XP, it still uses VDMsound but this made Blood much better, I highly recommend you try it. A big thanks goes out to RedFanatic! he wrote this method, i am only passing on his information.

Let's look at the benefits:

1) I can run Blood over 800x600 without any change in speed

2) I can use 44khz which sounds crispy

3) Runs Blood very smoothly for me, of course theres still delays with the cutscenes and slower midi and it would be better to own an old PC

Step 2: Install Blood
Install Blood to C:\Blood (or any thing else you prefer) and patch it to the latest version unless your using OUWB. then download and copy into the Blood directory nolfb and cli2nop then patch your blood.exe using cli2nop in a dos window like this:

Step 3: Blood 1 VGAFIX

Cru`Note: This may not work correctly for thoes with widescreen LCDs or the Intel GMA 950 chipset, I haven't isolated which yet, 640x480 works just fine however.

To get resolutions higher than 640x480 download this fix. (it works for WinXP, WinXP SP1, WinXP SP2 and Win2000 SP3)

5. You should not have to modify the 8-bit or 16-bit DMA unless you've changed them since their default values of 1 and 5, respectively, are correct.

6. Select Use These Settings and Continue. There will now be several consecutive dialogs that you must go through. Select 32 Voices, 16 Bit mixing, Stereo Sound and 22 Khz Mixing Rate. You will automatically be taken back to Sound Setup after selecting the mixing rate. Now, select Choose Music Card. Select General Midi then select MIDI port 0x330.

8. After all this press Esc and save settings on exit but do not run the game.

Step 5: Run Blood!
While at command CD to your Blood directory and type:

dosdrv
nolfb
blood

If anything is wrong double check everything to make sure you haven't made any silly mistakes

Step 6: Improving your resolution:
If you want to use the higher resolutions without going to the menu to change it every time you startup. Alter the Blood.cfg file and change:

IMPORTANT: DO NOT DOWNLOAD MATT BOVETT'S VDM SHORTCUTS!

I have concluded that the reason Blood runs better, is because I'm not using the VLP shortcuts which makes the game run slower for some odd reason and this restricts you to installing to C:\Games\Blood

You can make a Bat file to launch Blood easier just go into notepad and type:

@echo off
CLS
C:
CD \
CD Blood
NOLFB
DOSDRV
Blood

Then change the file type from txt to bat.

Cru`edit: I'm going to go head and lock this topic so the real useful stuff doesn't get to burried. The post button below should take you to the (discussion) split of the thread if you have any comments.

Also I added a few pics to help clarify some things and changed the Mixing rate to 22 Khz, I was experiencing a popping sound in game. Hey, a little QC never hurt